Sony president Kaz Hirai has retired his role as representative director and chairman of Sony Computer Entertainment, following his move up the Sony food chain earlier this year.
Hirai has now stepped down from his positions at Sony Computer Entertainment, although he will continue to serve as a member of the SCE board in a part-time role.
At the same time, Stringer has retired from his part-time role as a member of the SCE board -- essentially, Hirai has taken Stringer's place at SCE.
The reorganization marks Hirai's move away from Sony's PlayStation business, with more of a focus on his president role.
Contrast this:
Hirai admitted earlier this year that Sony has tough times ahead, with "one issue after another." The company posted record full year losses for the previous fiscal year in May.
With this quote at the dawn of the current console generation:
"The next generation doesn't start until we say it does." -Kaz Hirai
Sony press conference at E³ 2006, May 2006, as quoted in a CNN article.
I always remember that quote from just before the PS3 launched. I can’t help but feel Kaz’s reckless arrogance somehow angered the videogame industry gods. On a more serious note, if this was his same attitude while running the PS3 business (and I’m not saying it was) then I would speculate that he should carry a large chunk of the blame for the PS3 finishing last.
He's not to blame according to many reports released over the recent years, it was Ken Kutaragi who was responsible for the arrogant behaviour. Kaz Hirai was just a messenger at that conference, nothing else.
While Kutaragi was instrumental in the PS3's failure (and I certainly would classify it as that), his same technical visions were responsible for the wild successes that put Sony on top of a market that was otherwise alien to them. Arrogance perhaps, but warranted at the time. Hirai on the other hand was a yes man like many in the division, fueled to make an endless stream of ridiculous remarks (and I mean ridiculous with the fullest sense of ridicule) by 'their' visionary success. None of them correctly predicted the spiraling costs of manufacture and none of them did much to fix the position once they knew where they were headed while there was still time to adapt.
Kutaragi was put out to pasture quite harshly in 2007 - probably warranted mind you, and Kaz was left to pick up the pieces. Which he since failed to do. The games division appears now to have posted a sizable or catastrophic loss, every year since 2006 save 2010. As of yesterday we now know the games division has transitioned back into massive losses http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=480181.
For the life of me I can't see what Kaz demonstrated to justify his new appointment; certainly not the type of visionary strategy or genius turnaround that Sony desperately needs, and, quite frankly, both the shareholders and analysts agree (though I'll concede both are often wrong). It's also something that Kutaragi DID historically demonstrate. I'm sure Hirai's glad to be out of that division, but Sony needs more than a yes man, or a messenger, or a efficiency driver. They need a Jobs, and dare I say it - the game division needs an Iwata.
@Merc: He put them on the map, yes, but he was also the one who made Playstation 3 extremely hard to develop for due to alien (at the time) Cell architecture. He cared more that Sony came up with a revolutionary chip than all the other pieces of the puzzle. A true engineer with no regard for other functions.
It was Kutaragi who failed to see the faults of releasing Playstation 3 at such an incredibly high price. Hey, it's PLAYSTATION, of course it will sell is what he said at the time.
So, again, I wouldn't blame Kaz for the first poor years of Playstation 3. It was him who had to pick up all the pieces in his new role in 2007 and who made the console much more successful in the following years. But with losses, as you point out with that NeoGAF link - but this, again, is only a consequence of the botched launch of the Playstation 3 from its development to its first year out in the market.
Sony's problems have nothing to do w/ the PS3, Playstation, or SCE. Actually the SCE division which is part of Playstation is the only part of Sony that's actually doing well. Hence why Kaz is moving from SCE to President of the entire company.
You're quite wrong. The games division posted a profit in 2010 (though it was never revealed how much as Sony incorporated it into their 'Networked Products and Services Division'), and has otherwise posted a loss or massive loss every year since 2006.
Check the link I provided above. It shows that SCE, which as I understand it houses all Sony's gaming operations, lost approximately 1.2 billion dollars in the last year. That's in the context of 2.8 billion dollar loss for the 'Consumer Products and Services' division which it's now housed in, and a 5.6 billion dollar loss for the entirety of Sony in the last year. Sony as a whole is making massive, record setting losses. Gaming is a fraction of that, but no small fraction. A lot of traction has been made on the forums of the unquantified profits gaming made in 2010, but the reality is a catastrophe every other year. PS2 and PSP almost certainly have been generating profits form 2006 to present, so all losses can be attributed to PS3 and R&D activities. Kaz has presided over this for most of the generation
First, as an engineer, I would say a true engineer is supposed to do the most with a little, not the most with a lot :-)
Next I would say that the principles of the multi-cored, floating point vector math heavy, asymmetric Cell processor were also there in the Emotion Engine in the PS2 - the most succesful home console of all time. The ideas behind the Cell processor weren't unreasonable in the slightest - indeed making CPUs more like GPUs and GPUs more like CPUs is exactly where chip design has been forced over time as it becomes apparent that modern processing demands are no longer in the arena of general purpose logic and have shifted to simulation, and parallel processing of DSP type data. It's just that no-one wanted to make the leap - 'cause it's hard. The PC devs brought into the console domain in this generation to deal with the shader processing that console devs weren't used to were even more complacent about these changes to nice simple CPU processing than their console predecessors. Complacency about the difficulty of dealing with esoteric CPUs has always been a part of the console industry. It's only with the advent of Microsoft that keeping developers happy has been the focus> In my opinion, MS has been giving devs what they want, not what they need, and the reverse goes for Sony. Think how much more efficient all that machine vision processing for Kinect would be on Cell than on anything else. It's a moot point now thought, as GPGPU capabilities are finally filling in the gaps.
Moreover, I would say Hirai, and the other executives who kabaled to oust Kutaragi (once himself tipped to be front runner for the CEO position) were fully capable of alerting upper upper management and stopping the cost train at some stage somehow: They made a little headway: remember when PS3 had 6 USB ports, acted as a router and had 2 HDMI ports before HDMI was even ratified? But to reduce the real costs, which I agree were early decision that continue to plague their financials, they could (and potentially should) have: cut the blue laser diode; cut the hard drive; cut the number of SPEs; cut the number of shader units; cut all PS2 compatibility; cut the memory card ports; cut the clock frequency and thereby cut the power and cooling costs etc. Unfortunately, deciding what to cut is difficult and strategy wrecking. Save for bluray, cutting would also put them on un-level footing with MS, though that was never a problem for them in the last gen.
I'll concede that Kutaragi's direction wrecked the early years of PS3, and that it continues to plague the later years, and he would make a terrible CEO, but Hirai has had enough responsibility for long enough (and has even has a system under his belt in the Vita) to turn the thing around if he could bring something special to the table. That hasn't happened and as such is also unqualified to run all of Sony. Gaming is like a microcosm of their whole organisation. Kutaragi previously turned a null group into a positive one. Hirai failed to turn a negative group into a null one. For his failures (and arrogant position on tech) Kutaragi probably wasn't appropriate as a CEO (though those qualities HAVE worked for other companies). I don't see why Hirai is an appropriate choice either.
Edit: just remembered, they did cut the clock frequency! Cell was originally set to run at 4.6GHz!
Hirai admitted earlier this year that Sony has tough times ahead, with "one issue after another." The company posted record full year losses for the previous fiscal year in May.
With this quote at the dawn of the current console generation:
"The next generation doesn't start until we say it does." -Kaz Hirai
Sony press conference at E³ 2006, May 2006, as quoted in a CNN article.
I always remember that quote from just before the PS3 launched. I can’t help but feel Kaz’s reckless arrogance somehow angered the videogame industry gods. On a more serious note, if this was his same attitude while running the PS3 business (and I’m not saying it was) then I would speculate that he should carry a large chunk of the blame for the PS3 finishing last.
Kutaragi was put out to pasture quite harshly in 2007 - probably warranted mind you, and Kaz was left to pick up the pieces. Which he since failed to do. The games division appears now to have posted a sizable or catastrophic loss, every year since 2006 save 2010. As of yesterday we now know the games division has transitioned back into massive losses http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=480181.
For the life of me I can't see what Kaz demonstrated to justify his new appointment; certainly not the type of visionary strategy or genius turnaround that Sony desperately needs, and, quite frankly, both the shareholders and analysts agree (though I'll concede both are often wrong). It's also something that Kutaragi DID historically demonstrate. I'm sure Hirai's glad to be out of that division, but Sony needs more than a yes man, or a messenger, or a efficiency driver. They need a Jobs, and dare I say it - the game division needs an Iwata.
It was Kutaragi who failed to see the faults of releasing Playstation 3 at such an incredibly high price. Hey, it's PLAYSTATION, of course it will sell is what he said at the time.
So, again, I wouldn't blame Kaz for the first poor years of Playstation 3. It was him who had to pick up all the pieces in his new role in 2007 and who made the console much more successful in the following years. But with losses, as you point out with that NeoGAF link - but this, again, is only a consequence of the botched launch of the Playstation 3 from its development to its first year out in the market.
You're quite wrong. The games division posted a profit in 2010 (though it was never revealed how much as Sony incorporated it into their 'Networked Products and Services Division'), and has otherwise posted a loss or massive loss every year since 2006.
Check the link I provided above. It shows that SCE, which as I understand it houses all Sony's gaming operations, lost approximately 1.2 billion dollars in the last year. That's in the context of 2.8 billion dollar loss for the 'Consumer Products and Services' division which it's now housed in, and a 5.6 billion dollar loss for the entirety of Sony in the last year. Sony as a whole is making massive, record setting losses. Gaming is a fraction of that, but no small fraction. A lot of traction has been made on the forums of the unquantified profits gaming made in 2010, but the reality is a catastrophe every other year. PS2 and PSP almost certainly have been generating profits form 2006 to present, so all losses can be attributed to PS3 and R&D activities. Kaz has presided over this for most of the generation
First, as an engineer, I would say a true engineer is supposed to do the most with a little, not the most with a lot :-)
Next I would say that the principles of the multi-cored, floating point vector math heavy, asymmetric Cell processor were also there in the Emotion Engine in the PS2 - the most succesful home console of all time. The ideas behind the Cell processor weren't unreasonable in the slightest - indeed making CPUs more like GPUs and GPUs more like CPUs is exactly where chip design has been forced over time as it becomes apparent that modern processing demands are no longer in the arena of general purpose logic and have shifted to simulation, and parallel processing of DSP type data. It's just that no-one wanted to make the leap - 'cause it's hard. The PC devs brought into the console domain in this generation to deal with the shader processing that console devs weren't used to were even more complacent about these changes to nice simple CPU processing than their console predecessors. Complacency about the difficulty of dealing with esoteric CPUs has always been a part of the console industry. It's only with the advent of Microsoft that keeping developers happy has been the focus> In my opinion, MS has been giving devs what they want, not what they need, and the reverse goes for Sony. Think how much more efficient all that machine vision processing for Kinect would be on Cell than on anything else. It's a moot point now thought, as GPGPU capabilities are finally filling in the gaps.
Moreover, I would say Hirai, and the other executives who kabaled to oust Kutaragi (once himself tipped to be front runner for the CEO position) were fully capable of alerting upper upper management and stopping the cost train at some stage somehow: They made a little headway: remember when PS3 had 6 USB ports, acted as a router and had 2 HDMI ports before HDMI was even ratified? But to reduce the real costs, which I agree were early decision that continue to plague their financials, they could (and potentially should) have: cut the blue laser diode; cut the hard drive; cut the number of SPEs; cut the number of shader units; cut all PS2 compatibility; cut the memory card ports; cut the clock frequency and thereby cut the power and cooling costs etc. Unfortunately, deciding what to cut is difficult and strategy wrecking. Save for bluray, cutting would also put them on un-level footing with MS, though that was never a problem for them in the last gen.
I'll concede that Kutaragi's direction wrecked the early years of PS3, and that it continues to plague the later years, and he would make a terrible CEO, but Hirai has had enough responsibility for long enough (and has even has a system under his belt in the Vita) to turn the thing around if he could bring something special to the table. That hasn't happened and as such is also unqualified to run all of Sony. Gaming is like a microcosm of their whole organisation. Kutaragi previously turned a null group into a positive one. Hirai failed to turn a negative group into a null one. For his failures (and arrogant position on tech) Kutaragi probably wasn't appropriate as a CEO (though those qualities HAVE worked for other companies). I don't see why Hirai is an appropriate choice either.
Edit: just remembered, they did cut the clock frequency! Cell was originally set to run at 4.6GHz!